Hyphenation of capillary high-performance liquid chromatography to microcoil magnetic resonance spectroscopy—determination of various carotenoids in a small-sized spinach sample

Review on in vivo profiling of drug metabolites with LC-MS/MS in the past decade

Metabolite profiling is an indispensable part of drug discovery and development, enabling a comprehensive understanding of the drug's metabolic behavior. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry facilitates metabolite profiling by reducing sample complexity and providing high sensitivity. This review discusses the in vivo metabolite profiling involving LC-MS/MS and the utilization of QTOF, QQQ mass analyzers with a particular emphasis on a mass filter. Further, a summary of sample extraction procedures in biological matrices such as plasma, urine, feces, serum and hair as in vivo samples are outlined. toward the end, we present 15 case studies in biological matrices and their LC-MS/MS conditions to understand the metabolic disposition.

Advances in metabolite identification

One of the central challenges to metabolomics is metabolite identification. Regardless of whether one uses so-called 'targeted' or 'untargeted' metabolomics, eventually all paths lead to the requirement of identifying (and quantifying) certain key metabolites. Indeed, without metabolite identification, the results of any metabolomic analysis are biologically and chemically uninterpretable. Given the chemical diversity of most metabolomes and the character of most metabolomic data, metabolite identification is intrinsically difficult. Consequently a great deal of effort in metabolomics over the past decade has been focused on making metabolite identification better, faster and cheaper. This review describes some of the newly emerging techniques or technologies in metabolomics that are making metabolite identification easier and more robust. In particular, it focuses on advances in metabolite identification that have occurred over the past 2 to 3 years concerning the technologies, methodologies and software as applied to NMR, MS and separation science. The strengths and limitations of some of these approaches are discussed along with some of the important trends in metabolite identification.

High impact technologies for natural products screening

Natural products have historically been a rich source of lead molecules in drug discovery. However, natural products have been de-emphasized as high throughput screening resources in the recent past, in part because of difficulties in obtaining high quality natural products screening libraries, or in applying modern screening assays to these libraries. In addition, natural products programs based on screening of extract libraries, bioassay-guided isolation, structure elucidation and subsequent production scale-up are challenged to meet the rapid cycle times that are characteristic of the modern HTS approach. Fortunately, new technologies in mass spectrometry, NMR and other spectroscopic techniques can greatly facilitate the first components of the process - namely the efficient creation of high-quality natural products libraries, bimolecular target or cell-based screening, and early hit characterization. The success of any high throughput screening campaign is dependent on the quality of the chemical library. The construction and maintenance of a high quality natural products library, whether based on microbial, plant, marine or other sources is a costly endeavor. The library itself may be composed of samples that are themselves mixtures - such as crude extracts, semi-pure mixtures or single purified natural products. Each of these library designs carries with it distinctive advantages and disadvantages. Crude extract libraries have lower resource requirements for sample preparation, but high requirements for identification of the bioactive constituents. Pre-fractionated libraries can be an effective strategy to alleviate interferences encountered with crude libraries, and may shorten the time needed to identify the active principle. Purified natural product libraries require substantial resources for preparation, but offer the advantage that the hit detection process is reduced to that of synthetic single component libraries. Whether the natural products library consists of crude or partially fractionated mixtures, the library contents should be profiled to identify the known components present - a process known as dereplication. The use of mass spectrometry and HPLC-mass spectrometry together with spectral databases is a powerful tool in the chemometric profiling of bio-sources for natural product production. High throughput, high sensitivity flow NMR is an emerging tool in this area as well. Whether by cell based or biomolecular target based assays, screening of natural product extract libraries continues to furnish novel lead molecules for further drug development, despite challenges in the analysis and prioritization of natural products hits. Spectroscopic techniques are now being used to directly screen natural product and synthetic libraries. Mass spectrometry in the form of methods such as ESI-ICRFTMS, and FACS-MS as well as NMR methods such as SAR by NMR and STD-NMR have been utilized to effectively screen molecular libraries. Overall, emerging advances in mass spectrometry, NMR and other technologies are making it possible to overcome the challenges encountered in screening natural products libraries in today's drug discovery environment. As we apply these technologies and develop them even further, we can look forward to increased impact of natural products in the HTS based drug discovery.

Application of polymer based stationary phases in high performance liquid chromatography and capillary high performance liquid chromatography hyphenated to microcoil 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

The increased demand for chromatographic materials that are able to achieve a fast separation of large quantities of structure analogues is a great challenge. It is known that polymer based chromatographic materials have a higher loadability, compared to silica based sorbents. Unfortunately these polymer materials cannot be used under high pressure which is necessary in order to obtain high flow rates, and hence long times are needed to perform a separation. However, by immobilizing a polymer on a mechanically stable porous silica core, this problem can be circumvented and higher flows become feasible on these materials. Especially for capillary liquid chromatography hyphenated with nuclear magnetic resonance a high loadability is of great importance in order to obtain sharp, resolved, and concentrated peaks thus resulting in a good signal to noise ratio in the NMR experiment. Therefore, a highly shape selective chromatographic sorbent was developed by covalently immobilizing a poly(ethylene-co-acrylic) acid copolymer (-CH(2)CH(2)-)(x)[CH(2)CH(CO(2)H)-](y) (x=119, y=2.4) with a mass fraction of acrylic acid of 5% as stationary phase on silica via a spacer molecule (3-glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane). First, the loadability of this sorbent compared to C(30) is demonstrated by the HPLC separation of two xanthophyll isomers. Subsequently, it has been successfully employed in the hyphenation of capillary HPLC with microcoil (1)H NMR spectroscopy by separating and identifying a highly concentrated solution of the tocopherol homologues.

Identification of natural products using HPLC-SPE combined with CapNMR

Two major development areas in HPLC-NMR hyphenation are postcolumn solid-phase extraction (HPLC-SPE-NMR) and capillary separations with NMR detection by means of solenoidal microcoils (CapNMR). These two techniques were combined off-line into HPLC-SPE-CapNMR, which combines the advantage of high loadability of normal-bore HPLC columns with high mass sensitivity of capillary NMR probes with an active volume of 1.5 microL. The technique was used for rapid identification of complex sesquiterpene lactones and esterified phenylpropanoids present in an essentially crude plant extract (toluene fraction of an ethanolic extract of Thapsia garganica fruits). Elution profiles of 10 x 1 mm i.d. SPE cartridges filled with poly(divinylbenzene) resin were found to be only marginally broader than those observed upon direct injection of 6-microL samples into the probe. Thus, the technique focuses analytes emerging in the HPLC elution bands of 0.5-1 mL into volumes of approximately 10 microL, compatible with the CapNMR probe. Using this technique, nine natural products (1-9) present in the plant extract in amounts varying from 0.1 to 20% were identified by means of 1D and 2D NMR spectra, supported by parallel HPLC-ESIMS measurements. Therefore, HPLC-SPE-CapNMR should be regarded as an attractive alternative to other applications of CapNMR for mixture analysis.

Production of deuterated lutein by Chlorella protothecoides and its detection by mass spectrometric methods

Chlorella protothecoides, a lutein-producing microalga, was grown aerobically in a mineral medium prepared with 70% (v/v) deuterated water. HPLC/atmospheric pressure chemical ionization-mass spectrometry (HPLC/APCI-MS) analysis revealed approximately 58% replacement of hydrogen by deuterium atoms as indicated by the molecular mass cluster at around m/z 599. The rapidly growing microalga had much higher levels (58%) of deuterium substitution relative to previously reported (9-15%) natural sources of lutein.